Semester Break is almost here!

I know we are all excited for this semester to be ending and to have at least 10 days off. If you are anything like me, you are excited but also thinking about everything that you need to do to prepare for next semester.

One thing that I am trying to work on is balance between my teaching responsibilities and my family responsibilities. To this end I am really trying to work on ways to recharge over the break so I am ready to go when it is time to come back to school!

Here are the ways I am going to work on recharging and we would love to hear from all you on how you recharge over the semester break. ​

Make Time for Family/friends only

Basically I have a ban on work once the semester ends through the 26th of December. Those days are for family and friends. I spend my time baking, hanging out with my family, wrapping presents, and all of that stuff. My family always appreciates this, because they have my full attention and turn off my teacher brain for a little while which I think is really important. It helps clear my mind and allows me to come back to my work with a fresh start. ​

Spend some time/Energy on myself

This is just as important as spending time with family and friends. I need some time for myself, so I don't feel like I am going to go crazy and snap at people. This can be as simple as reading a book for an hour at night or my favorite is a day at the spa. To me, if we don't do this we are really hurting ourselves, family, and students. We can't take of others if we don't take care of ourselves. We just need to find a little bit of time for ourselves, so we can give the best version of ourselves for everyone else. ​

take some time for growth

I have lately really become aware or rediscovered how important it is for teachers to keep learning. When we do this, it keeps us growing which is important considering that is what we want from our students. I have also found that it just gets my creative process going and helps me think of new ways to do things and new ways to solve problems I have been having.

So during my break I am going to finish reading a book on differentiated instruction which is a huge focus for me right now. I have already started it and the ideas are already flowing! ​

Time Chunk your work

This is strategy that we use with kids all of the time, but I found that it works for me as well. When I am on break, I find that I like to schedule time for work or a specific task and then I make myself take a break and do something completely not related. I will take time and play a game with my kids, watch a movie with my husband, or have lunch with a friend. This allows my mind to take a break and process anything that I was working on and then I can come back to it or start a new task. This also helps me keep some perspective and not get overwhelmed by all of the things that I want/have to get done.

Also this process helps me keep my work goals realistic for the break. It is a break after all and if schedule chunks of work then I am forced to prioritize my work and really see what needs to be done before I go back to school in January. ​

For the over-achievers out there...

Get some work done BEFORE your break. For those intense planners who won't be able to really check out of work, try to get the first 2 weeks of the 2nd semester planned and materials ready BEFORE you leave work for break. If you know that the first two weeks are all set to go, you may be able to unplug better and really enjoy your break!​

Your Turn! How do you recharge over break?

As this semester draws to a close, it is natural to begin to evaluate it for its successes and challenges. I start thinking about the changes I want to make to next semester and what I wish I had done differently and reviewing new tools that I have found over the past months.

I feel like this is a natural process that all teachers go through as we approach the ending of semester or school year. Being reflective is something that is ingrained in us by our desire to do better for the students and any teaching program I have ever heard of. We recognize the importance of being reflective and intuitively practice it.

My semester has been one of challenges to be frank. I have had personal challenges and professional challenges that have really highlighted the need to be purposeful in the classroom, my reflections, and reactions to my reflections.

I feel like this year I fell into the trap of reflecting but not acting. I was thinking a lot about what was happening in my classroom, but not taking the time to process my reflections and create an action plan around them. Those last two steps are really important to being purposeful as a teacher and reflective professional. The failure of not processing and acting on my reflections is one of the reasons, I continued to struggle.​

The impact this had on my classroom

More Chaotic than Normal. As you all know I am pretty dedicated to student-directed learning. I feel it allows me to differentiate more and meet the needs of students easier. This semester though my classes felt much more chaotic and stressful, because even though I was noticing students struggling and myself struggling with certain aspects of the content or the classroom, I wasn’t able to turn my observations and reflections into change fast enough. I think a part of me felt that I needed to let things play out and see where they went or I thought that there wasn’t anything I could really do in the middle of a semester and would have to wait till the typical end of the semester to reflect and make changes.

Increase of Classroom Management Issues. This is really tied to the chaos one as well, but I did have more issues with classroom management this year than I had in last two semesters doing the self-paced, student-directed learning. I feel that this stems again from students not feeling as secure in their learning and my inaction.

Students not reaching Content Mastery. This is the one that really hurts the most. I don’t feel like my students this semester are really gaining a mastery of the content like they have in semesters past. My students this semester struggled in a way that I did not really anticipate and because I was not purposeful in my reflection, process, and action, the learning I feel suffered. This does not take responsibility away from the student-learner because they are also part of the equation but as the teacher I needed to be more proactive.

​Reading this, it probably seems like I am being really hard on myself and that it could just be one of the groups of students that struggle and no matter what I did in the classroom, those students were going to struggle. That could very well be true, but I also feel like this semester was a humbling, challenge that reminded me of two very important things about teaching.

Be present, reflective, purposeful, and proactive. I will admit to coming into this semester with a feeling of “I’ve got this”. I can handle anything because I am amazing and I don’t struggle with little things anymore. Well that is not the case. Just because I am senior teacher in my building and have a successful track record doesn’t mean that I will not struggle with things like classroom management and low-achieving students. This semester my students needed me to be more firm and more hands-on than I was prepared for in my student-directed system and I didn’t act as quickly as I should have to get them where I wanted them to be. If you find yourself struggling, a teacher needs to be proactive and take the time to reflect, process, and form an action to help alleviate the problem. This could require assistance from your teacher tribe and that is definitely O.K. I would actually encourage it. My teacher tribe is what has helped me the most this semester in figuring out what to do in my classes.

Keep Learning. As teachers we have to recognize that there is always something new to learn or sometimes relearn. I realized in the middle of this semester that it had been awhile since I had brushed up on my classroom management techniques and philosophy. I had not taken time to really read any interesting articles on teaching practices. I didn’t take time to bring up those issues in my PLC or with my other teacher colleagues. Teachers are learners. We need to keep learning to keep our skills sharp and focused on the best practices we know about and looking for new ones to add to our tool belt. ​

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My plan Moving Forward

I do not want to make the same mistakes I made this semester, so I have reflected, processed, and developed this action plan for next semester to make sure that I am being the best reflective and purposeful teacher I can be.

Schedule time to reflect and process before I leave school everyday. This is going to be a big thing for me. Often I am running out the school door when the bell rings because I have automatically shifted to wife and mom mode. I have discovered this doesn’t work for me because I need to take at least 5-10 minutes at the end of the day and jot down my thoughts on the day. This should help me remember things that I need to focus on for the next day and add to my game plan. I typically do my best planning in the morning and I get to school pretty early because I realize that this works for me. The only problem is I don’t always remember exactly what my thoughts were at the end of the day by the next morning.

Schedule Work Time and Home Time. All teachers know that it is virtually impossible to 100% keep your school work at school and not bring it home. I know this, but what I plan to work on is being more thoughtful about my time. I need to schedule those days with my family if I know that I need to spend one or two saturdays a month on school work to keep myself ahead of the game. Then I that should free me up to really enjoy the time I have scheduled with my family and friends. I won’t be stressing about the work that I need to do or the problem that I need to solve at work. Finding a balance is difficult, and as a person that needs structure, I need to create my structure.

Don’t Wait to ask for help. This semester, I sat alone in my bubble for way too long and did not call on my teacher tribe. I know that they are there for me and I need to ask them for assistance. I am actually going to have as many people as possible observe me next semester and look for the key things that I am going to work to change in my class. This way I will have a bunch of people to talk to about my class and what I want to do. This has included all of our building administrators as well. I want their input.

Keep learning. I dragged my co-blogger Becca in on this one. We are going to start reading education and teaching practice books to review for ourselves and for our readers. We want everyone to keep learning. I am also planning to be more active on Twitter for edchats and reading new articles instead of just bookmarking them. ​

​Teaching is hard, but it is also amazing, fulfilling, and incredibly important. I want to be the best I possibly can be for my students and I think that doing these things will help me do that. I hope that you take away from this post that it is O.K. to struggle, because when we struggle we learn things about ourselves. That when you find yourself struggling at school take time to reflect on what is happening, but don’t just stop there. Take the next steps. Process your reflections and develop an action to help or celebrate if needed. Lastly, don’t forget to keep learning. Learning is essential to great teaching!

​Our first day back from Thanksgiving break and I had a sub. No, I wasn’t sick, I was at a curriculum meeting. It’s at this point must of us are rolling our eyes and thinking, was that really necessary? Could we have met for an hour or just used email and Google Apps to communicate? I’m right there with you. I hate missing a school day unless I can be sure that what I have learned or accomplished will positively and directly impact students.last Monday was one of those days and I think there were some really important components necessary for any department who wants to have quality curriculum that result in tangible accomplishments.​​

Have a clear goal.We were trying to find a better way to place kids in the correct class as freshmen. We had way too many students who were moving to a lower track and a few moving to a higher track of math during the first semester of school. When almost 20% of your freshmen class are changing tracks, something is wrong with the placement method. We all knew that it was an issue and needed to find a better way to help transition students into the correct high school math course.​

Include all the key players AND be sure they have a voice.​How many of us have been given notes from a meeting we weren’t present for containing some sort of directive or decision that directly impacted us? I’m sure there are some out there that are totally fine with this but I’d argue that making real change means all parties involved in implementing the change need to be present and in agreement about the changes made. How can we be 100% clear and in agreement, ready to implement or enforce something when we weren’t there?This particular curriculum meeting was great because all of the freshmen math teachers were there as well as the 8th grade math teachers from each feeder middle school. Even better, we were trusted to get the goal accomplished, which brings me to the next point-​​​

Remember, it isn't an admin meeting.I have nothing against administrators. I would love to be an administrator one day! In fact, great administrators helped this meeting happen! Most would admit however that admin meetings have a reputation for being a lot of talk and jumping through the hoops states put on public schools. This meeting wasn't like that. We started by talking about how each of us grade and what students need to know before they enter our classes in order to be successful. We used Google docs and collaborated. There was one goal and that was to understand the expectations for enterering high school math classes and to create a placement test and criteria for placing students correctly. We had an entire day to complete the task and our administrators simply poked their head in every now and then to see if we needed anything. We weren't given additional tasks. No one walked in and said they would have to check with another higher up before we'd have an official answer. We had the autonomy to make final decisions and simply report back how the day went!​

Give mutual respect and desire open communication.

During the first hour of the meeting, we were trying to sort out how best to spend the day and accomplish the goal. We began to discuss the gaps we were seeing at the high school. Kids didn't know the difference between slope and plotting an ordered pair or they were lacking number sense, etc. It would have been really easy for for the 8th grade teachers to take it personally and shut down but they didn't. We were not attacking them and they trusted that. We knew they had pressure to teach the standards and push kids the same way that we did and we were determined to respect and work together to do what was best for our students. ​

Make decisions with kids in mind.

Again, near the beginning of the morning we were talking about the standards assigned to each of our courses and the amount of pressure we felt to speed through it in order to "cover" everything. I know we are not alone in this feeling and the fact that none of the schools were accountable to each other by being in the same district could have made the conversation worse. Instead, we were able to communicate respectfully and come to the conclusion that we were professionals who could take responsibility for specific standards and be accountable to each other. We didn't work in the same town or within the same district but we served the same kids. In the end, what was best for them was for us to trust that the person coming next would do what they said they would do. For example, I will teach students how to solve multi-step equations. The 8th grade teachers who have the students who will enter my track would then be sure that the students have become masters of solving one step equations and using the order of operations. Rather than pushing those kids through solving different equations, they would leave that to me and spend the time being sure they had the prerequisite skills mastered. No more rushing kids through standards. They need to become masters of the material and that doesn't happen by reviewing fractions for one week every year. As hard as it is to make these decisions, they have to be made because it is what is best for kids.

Communication doesn't end after the meeting does.

Finally, one of the most important steps to a curriculum meeting is that the discussion that began does not end. After completing our goal for the day and creating a placement test that we agreed on, we discussed what we needed to do as a follow up. When would it be given? How would students review? How would it be graded consistently across three different middle schools? How will they be sure their prerequisite standards would be mastered before students got to 8th grade?We set a date to meet again after the test would be given so that we could grade it all together and agree. The 8th grade teachers said they planned on speaking with the lower grades to have similar meetings about mastering standards. The key here is that it wasn't over. We didn't pat ourselves on the back and move on. We gave each other high fives for the day and planned to meet again and email in between meetings. ​

Why do we even need a curriculum meeting?

Curriculum is the plan for what we will teach kids. If we don't discuss it and work to make it the very best it can be, what are we doing? We owe it to our profession and to our students and community to talk to each other. We need to be willing to have the hard conversations about what we are doing and whether or not it is the best for our students. We may feel like we have kids all the time but in reality, that 45 minutes that I see students 5 times a week and 9 months of the year flies by. ​